Evidence map›Paper›PMID 26059726›Full record

ArticlePsychological research2016

The roles of stimulus and response uncertainty in forced-choice performance: an amendment to Hick/Hyman Law.

Tim Wifall, Eliot Hazeltine, J Toby Mordkoff

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Article in Psychological research, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
5citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

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Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

5 citing papers in PubMed.

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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Tim WifallDepartment of Psychology, University of Iowa, E11 Seashore Hall, Iowa City, IA, 52241, USA. twifall@gmail.com.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5331-085X
Eliot HazeltineDepartment of Psychology, University of Iowa, E11 Seashore Hall, Iowa City, IA, 52241, USA.
J Toby MordkoffDepartment of Psychology, University of Iowa, E11 Seashore Hall, Iowa City, IA, 52241, USA.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Hick/Hyman Law describes one of the core phenomena in the study of human information processing: mean response time is a linear function of average uncertainty. In the original work of Hick, (1952) and Hyman, (1953), along with many follow-up studies, uncertainty regarding the stimulus and uncertainty regarding the response were confounded such that the relative importance of these two factors remains mostly unknown. The present work first replicates Hick/Hyman Law with a new set of stimuli and then goes on to separately estimate the roles of stimulus and response uncertainty. The results demonstrate that, for a popular type of task-visual stimuli mapped to vocal responses-response uncertainty accounts for a majority of the effect. The results justify a revised expression of Hick/Hyman Law and place strong constraints on theoretical accounts of the law, as well as models of response selection in general.

Indexed as

Choice BehaviorModels, PsychologicalUncertaintyDiscrimination, PsychologicalFemaleHumansMaleReaction Time

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.